learning

Sticking to the process of achieving my goals has always been one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome, both on my way to becoming a better professional, and in my private life. I have found that in some areas I need to make an extraordinary amount of effort to keep myself on the right track, no matter how S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-based) my goals are. I couldn’t understand why in some cases I was able to make the desired progress, while in others I kept failing. Was it a matter of talent I was missing, or a skill I haven’t acquired yet? I have seen the dots, but I didn’t yet know how to connect them.

Many content creators celebrate their 10k, 100k, or 1M subscribers/followers milestones. There is nothing wrong with that. Achieving such numbers require tons of work, time, effort, sometimes even luck. Those numbers do not show up overnight. People deserve celebrating those moments and sharing their happiness with their community. Today I want to share my own success with you. The number that wouldn’t be possible without your trust and support.

There are books you read once, and you don’t plan to read them back again any time soon. However, some books are so influential and valuable that when you decide to study them the second time, you realize that it was the right choice, and you could make this call a few years earlier. Today I would like to show you a book that belongs to this second group — no doubts about that.

A few days ago I have reached 365 consecutive days on Stack Overflow. In the beginning of July 2017 I have decided to run an experiment - visit Stack Overflow every single day and do something useful to other community members (answer a question, review one of the queues, edit and improve existing questions and so on). Now it is the best time to summarize this experiment and share my thoughts with you.